


A Real Boy

by Barb Cummings (Rahirah)



Series: The Barbverse [99]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-23
Updated: 2010-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:29:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahirah/pseuds/Barb%20Cummings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>History repeats itself - sorta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Real Boy

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in the same universe as "Raising In the Sun," "Necessary Evils," and "A Parliament of Monsters," and contains spoilers for previous works in the series.

Bill’s a tight curl of misery on the bed when she finds him, hands buried in his sandy mop of curls, elbows bent on drawn-up knees. His kneecaps peek white and bony through torn denim (jeans too short already – he’s taller than Spike now, though not by much). The taut blades of his shoulders saw the fabric of his t-shirt, but they're not shaking. When she was his age she wept her heart out for loves lost. Maybe her son’s got the better idea: she ran dry of tears a long time before she ran out of things to cry about.

Buffy shoves the biology textbook aside and sits down on the edge of the bed, toeing three mismatched sneakers, a soccer ball, and some very dubious underwear under the bed as she does so. This was her room, once, bright and sunny – now it’s candlelit and smells of books and modeling glue and the faint locker-room funk of teenaged boy which transcends species. Bill unwinds, an unraveling knot of lanky limbs and tangled sheets. His glasses are lost somewhere in the bedclothes, and some distant part of her hopes he hasn’t sat on them. Again.

“She's gone. She just left,” he whispers. His eyes may be dry, but the look on his face is a week of rainy days. “She told me none of it was real. That she’d never – She said I wasn’t – that I couldn’t - ”

There's a cosmic irony in this, but Buffy's not in the mood to appreciate it. Bill buries his face in her lap as she strokes his tousled curls. She could tell him it was all for the best, she knew all along that nothing good would come of falling for a Council Slayer, and it’s better that it ends now, before more than adolescent hearts get broken. Yeah. Maybe she will tell him that. Later. Six or seven years later should do it.

She doesn't need to look to tell that her son's eyes are golden now, though no less anguished. Bill bares his fangs. “If I can’t love,” he asks, wildly, “Why do I feel like this? I wish I were dead. I wish she were dead! I wish I'd - ”

“Would that really make you feel any better?” Buffy interrupts. She should feel sorrier for the girl who dumped him, she knows. She’s been that girl, and she knows how hard it is - but that was years ago, and here and now she's Mom - and Slayer. Too. Still. Always. It’s been a long time since she believed it was as simple as _vampires can’t love,_ but pretending they love in exactly the same ways humans do is a recipe for disaster. She should have tried to explain. But if she had, she’s pretty sure the girl in question would just have run farther, faster, and sooner. She would have. Maybe it was like being seventeen - you couldn’t understand until you lived through it.

Bill squeezes his eyes shut, contemplating a world without Her. When they open, they’re grey again, and wet at last. “No,” he says. “It wouldn’t.” He’s shaking now. “Mom…it hurts.”

“I know, honey.” Love’s a funny thing, but loss is universal. She places a hand on her son’s heart, the slow inhuman beat that marks him as something new under the sun (and a good set of blackout curtains.) “That’s how you know it’s real.”

**End**


End file.
